Israeli forces have detained two journalists, two foreign solidarity activists and a Palestinian anti-settlement activist in the southern occupied West Bank city of Hebron while they were documenting attacks carried out by illegal Israeli settlers, according to local sources.
Osama Makhamera, a Palestinian activist involved in resisting settlement expansion, told Anadolu on Friday that Israeli forces stormed the Rujum al-Aala area after illegal settlers attacked residents of the Masafer Yatta region, south of Hebron.
He said the forces detained two journalists working with a foreign media outlet, along with two foreign activists and Rateb al-Jbour, coordinator of the popular and national committees opposing illegal Israeli settlement activity in southern Hebron, as they were documenting the settler assault.
Makhamera added that the detainees were taken to a nearby Israeli settlement in the area. Al-Jbour was later released, while the fate of the journalists and foreign activists remains unknown.
He said the Rujum al-Aala community has faced repeated attacks by illegal settlers, with incidents escalating in recent days.
The assaults have left residents wounded, including women and children, caused extensive damage to homes and property, destroyed crops, and prevented residents from accessing their farmland and grazing areas.
Human Rights Glance
Israeli strikes in Gaza killed at least 19 Palestinians, most of them women and children, by midday Wednesday, according to hospital officials. Israel pledged to continue strikes, saying that it was responding to a militant attack on Israeli soldiers that seriously wounded one.
The Israel-Palestine director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Omar Shakir, resigned effective on Monday after over almost a decade at the organization in protest of a top-level decision to shelve a report that characterized Israel’s decades-long campaign to deny Palestinians the right of return to their homes and land a “crime against humanity.”
In February 2024, just over three months into Israel’s war on Gaza, U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, and his deputy, Stephanie Hallett, blocked an internal cable intended for wider distribution among senior officials in the Biden administration that warned northern Gaza had turned into an “apocalyptic wasteland,” according to Reuters.





























